Grade 11 students at Vientiane Pattana School taking the Cambridge AS and A Level “Travel and Tourism” course will find an interesting surprise on page 131 of their text book, where Case Study 11 stars: “Southern Laos launches tourism destination brand”, a three-year-old press release.
This should please Lao tourism stakeholders on two fronts: a respected Lao international school includes Cambridge-level travel and tourism in its curriculum, and academia has selected Southern Laos for this particular case study.
The study falls in “Chapter 3: Destination Marketing” under “3.12: Marketing activities for launching a brand”. This section focusses on three sub-topics: communication methods and events, design promotional materials, and agree on the campaign.
Activity 20 asks three questions based on the release:
1. Identify the guardians of the Southern Laos destination brand.
2. Assess how effective the tagline for the brand identity is likely to be, and why?
3. Identify two communications methods used to raise awareness of the brand and why they were chosen.
This entry into secondary school academia places Southern Laos tourism in a unique position. They already know the answers. My daughter and her classmates don’t.
The local trade may also be interested in seeing how academia tries to mainstream the branding and marketing of Southern Laos, when the situation is far from the norm.
Next comes “3.13: Implementing the destination brand.” They talk about an NTO…
